The Rise and Fall of Secular Humanism

And to understand our culture, we need to see that there are two fundamental ideologies that I will show at the end of my lectures possibly are really the same because they're Oneist, namely secular humanism and revive paganism. They're very different but at the end of the day, they are in their fundamental orientations of the world -- Oneist. [00:00:50]

And what you have you see is, from the intelligent use of individual reason which has produced the incredible successes of Western culture through science and technology. So, that one day human beings would walk on the moon; this kind of thinking became more and more enamored of its own power and felt that it was the only way of relating to the world -- that human reason was the source of truth. [00:03:49]

Optimism in what mankind could produce, its capacities to bring about a better world took the minds of intellectuals by storm and of course invaded the university. So that, so many of our intellectuals bought into this system. Bringing about if you like this vision of a kingdom of man on earth, you can already see how Oneist that is, right? [00:05:09]

The French philosopher who was part of this French Revolution -- Voltaire, was fundamentally anti-Christian. He was a friend by the way of Benjamin Franklin, who himself was a very conflicted man because some of you know that Benjamin Franklin was fascinated by George Whitfield and helped pay for some of his campaign. [00:06:25]

Sigmund Freud in his book "The Future of an Illusion" speaks about religion in particularism his own Judaism as a "mass delusion, a collective neurosis which enshrines our infantile longing." He actually describes it as a serious pathological condition from which one needed to be healed. Really massive anti-religious mindset going on amongst the intellectuals of the 19th and 20th centuries. [00:09:00]

Liberalism is the adaptation of the world's kind of thinking and trying to make it Christian, that's what liberals have done all through the ages since the beginning. Christianity, beginning with the Gnostics, who were the original liberals who tried to take pagan notions of the mystery religions and make them Christian. So that's the mechanism that liberals use. [00:10:11]

On a different level, the secular humanists were greatly influenced by Darwin, who would effectively eliminated belief in "God the Creator," and proposed in place of "God the Creator" the idea of an unguided and impersonal process of natural selection. Life came about by mere chance, and man was seen as the result of purposelessness and a mere natural process, that did not have him in mind by the way, and so we are really the result of chance. [00:12:13]

The final triumph then of secular humanism is to declare in America in the '70s that God had died. Secular humanism had won. Now in a certain sense, these predictions have come true. We're seeing the decline of the Christian faith in the population as a whole. No longer are many people influenced by a Christian way of thinking and I don't think we should hide our eyes from that. [00:14:06]

Let me give you a simple definition, it comes in various names. As an intellectual discipline, it is known as "philosophical materialism," that matter is ultimate. (In the beginning was matter.) That's the philosophy of materialism. As a religious expression, it is called 'Atheism', the faith belief that there is no God. There's no -- you can't prove that rationally, right? [00:15:32]

And the withering away of secular humanism, (oh let me just say it) the proof is, how many people now say, "I'm spiritual but not religious?" In other words, they are making a claim to spirituality which doesn't fit with secular humanism, right? -- That's superstition. Any kind of faith is superstition. [00:17:55]

And so secular humanism produced a profound sense of alienation from the rest of the universe. So we human beings, you see, are isolated in this massive cosmos, and we have no real relationship with the outside and so we have a profound sense of alienation. Have you met people like that? They are looking for a sense of wholeness. [00:19:45]

The greatest atheist of the 20th century finally has to admit that secularism cannot justify the human mind. Isn't that beautiful? But then, finally, there's a new way of thinking. It is the thinking of this new spirituality. David Miller, who was a professor at Syracuse University, and was one of the 'death of God' theologians actually said, "At the death of God, you will see the rebirth of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome." [00:22:40]